It's early April but temperatures are still tracking close to high Summer averages in NSW, to the dismay of some, especially when coupled with a lack of rain in many places. But turn the season will, it always does.

I don't know whether it's too soon to make predictions. We have some experts here who may care to hazard an opinion (or guess). The BOM's outlook for April to June indicates cooler and wetter for SE NSW but the record of these predictions has been mixed. I have a theory (without proof) that warmth in one season tends to be balanced by 'coolth' in another. Hot Summers are followed by cold Winters. This happened in 1896 and 1991. On the other hand the hot 2016/17 Summer was followed by a mild Winter, but a bumper snow season as there was heavy precipitation in Alpine areas. On the other hand, cool, cloudy Summers in the mid 90s were balanced by warm Winters.

ENSO seems to be neutral, so no indication there. The Annualar mode is negative, which means stronger Westerlies, good for snow. Warm seas in the Tasman are good for East Coast Lows. Combined with cold fronts, snow can result, but also warm, wet conditions.

Here's another one: in Sydney, the hottest average April maximum on record was 25.6 in 1922, reaching 31.6 on April 24. May and the following Winter were average, cold by today's standards. The average maxima in Sydney for May, June and July were 19.5 (an amazing drop of 6 degrees from the previous month), then 17.7 and 16.6. The flip happened around May 7.

So I have no idea what the coming snow season will be like except that there will be one. As always, we shall see.

Has anybody looked at Weatherzone`s predicted so called record maximum temperature for Thredbo Village for April 2018....even though 6 days do not have a maximum temperature recorded. Very unscientific.Funnily enough this coincides with a 6 day cold spell.If you cross reference those 6 empty temperatures with the Cabramurra temperatures for those days (similar long term climate), you get vastly different numbers.... and a record high is unlikely.

Has anybody looked at Weatherzone`s predicted so called record maximum temperature for Thredbo Village for April 2018....even though 6 days do not have a maximum temperature recorded. Very unscientific.Funnily enough this coincides with a 6 day cold spell.If you cross reference those 6 empty temperatures with the Cabramurra temperatures for those days (similar long term climate), you get vastly different numbers.... and a record high is unlikely.

There are gaps in readings all over the place, I think more so than in the past. For example, half of the hot month of January 2018 seems to be missing for Bellambi. Even capital cities have the odd missing readings.

This is indeed unfortunate, but I don't see any sinister purpose at work, other than cuts by an unsympathetic Government. I surmise it's most likely about budgets and money. Like just about everywhere else, staffing at the Bureau of Meteorology has probably been cut back to the bone, as has likely been the budget for checking and maintaining equipment.

Maybe someone who has specific knowledge would care to comment. It does mean that any monthly records or total rainfall for April 2018 in Thredbo, or for January 2018 in Bellambi, don't have much meaning, but those daily temperature recordings that are available can and should contribute to averges.

April temperature records will be smashed all over much of Australia, even if the rest of the month is average, so the loss of Thredbo records won't make much difference to the bigger picture.

Anyway, looking forward to some snow. There was a bit of settled snow in the Alpine areas early this week but warmer weather would have quickly melted it. There doesn't look to be any more snow in the offing, but it will eventually arrive.

Two perhaps related processes that may generally auger well for snowfall here in w.a(and perhaps other areas as well) -

(if) an el nino modoki develops later this year - I think because of an association with wave guide patterns in the troposphere which tend to direct planetary wave activity polewards.(though the more significant influence from memory is thought to be in the following winter)

The phase of the qbo - especially in spring - now close to easterly phase at all levels of the tropical stratosphere - associated with weakening of the polar stratospheric vortex.

You make some good points Steve, but when 7 out of 30 days are missing, Weatherzone or any organization involved with statistics should state that there results may be flawed due to poor data collection.Anyway just back in Sydney from the Snowy. Nice little snowfall down to around 1600m during Friday afternoon.. This is certain to melt away again. Hopefully we get a significant fall around 20th May and the resorts will capitalise and fire up the snow guns..... but time will tell.

Surprised no one has mentioned model forecasts for around Thursday onwards this coming week for SE Aus. BIG southerly fetch way into the uppers around a strong upper low drifting in from almost due south and associated surface low. Doesn't have the coldest surface temps which isn't surprising for this early in the season but should bring the first proper dumps of snow to many highland areas.

Surprised no one has mentioned model forecasts for around Thursday onwards this coming week for SE Aus. BIG southerly fetch way into the uppers around a strong upper low drifting in from almost due south and associated surface low. Doesn't have the coldest surface temps which isn't surprising for this early in the season but should bring the first proper dumps of snow to many highland areas.

Congratulations on the effort. I realise, not intended to deal with the outlook for snow minnows like W.A - but gratifying to notice something of anomalous -ve mid-tropospheric heights spread as far as southern W.A, and our 2m temp outlook does look reasonably promising.

Read your analysis. I appreciate the work that’s gone into but I must say it seemed like a very lengthy way to arrive at the conclusion that the season will be, average. For the most part I think the drivers were understated in terms of their influence on snow depth. I guess this is probably due to a lack of research in this field but to me it seems like adding + or - 3-5cm isn’t particularly useful for determining the type of season we could expect. Those effects are simply too low to be considered a driver, ithat’s the the type of difference between a few clouds, not a serious variable that needs to be considered.

If 180cm or there abouts is the average, what depths are the standard deviations from this mean? If the effects are so small that we’re talking a depth variability of 5cm’s, I’d probably not worry much about them all together, use a longer time series and just use basic statistics to assume 66% of years are one sd from the mean 95% are 2sd’s etc, whilst keeping in mind the downward trend in snow depths over the past few decades.

The average was 173cm. My prediction was 182cm. I appreciate your honesty, but if you are looking for more of a data analysis, I would suggest you look at Gerg's analysis. He has SDs, and more rigorous data aspects. I may add these to my outlook in the future however, if this is important to people. To me, it's much less about a number, and more about the climate driver analysis. That is my "style", other predictions have their own style. The number is extremely likely to be wrong, but it is more about the idea, and general trends and influences, than a number.

The numbers themselves are based upon hours of weighting and multiple influences. They may be understated, but all the levels of influences are in my opinion and I wouldn't change them, so doubling (or whatever is determined) the effect of all of the drivers would just end up in the same result. The other reason why was that the drivers were fairly neutral, so large scale effects weren't very high. Any other thoughts are appreciated though

One or two things you stated were things I wanted to try, but didn't have time for as well.

Congratulations on the effort. I realise, not intended to deal with the outlook for snow minnows like W.A - but gratifying to notice something of anomalous -ve mid-tropospheric heights spread as far as southern W.A, and our 2m temp outlook does look reasonably promising.

Thank you snowbooby You are correct, not intended to relate to Western Australia snowfall, different influences and levels of that.